Some common sense comments from Tom Woods on the anti-Russia hysteria.

“The hysteria over the Trump-Putin summit is astonishing.

There really is a Deep State, and it’s normally pretty subtle. The subtlety is all gone now.

It’s nonstop, round-the-clock hysteria. No president has ever been on the receiving end of this much unhinged abuse — even when they’ve richly deserved it.

With Trump, I find myself criticizing him when all the respectables are cheering him (as in the case of the Syria strike), and (sometimes) defending him when all the respectables are attacking him.

The respectables brought us Afghanistan, the Iraq war, the destruction of Libya, the destruction of federalism, an unpayable debt, the housing bubble, and 1001 other monstrosities. That doesn’t mean they’re always wrong, but, well, it almost does.

In an interview with Rand Paul, Wolf Blitzer demanded to know if the Kentucky senator trusted U.S. intelligence agencies.

Well, this much I know: there’d be far fewer dead people in the world if Wolf Blitzer hadn’t trusted U.S. intelligence agencies.

Trump’s foreign policy leaves plenty to be desired, needless to say. But he does utter important truths from time to time, and they send the creeps, spooks, and profiteers who benefit from mindless bellicosity into fits of apoplexy.

David Stockman, OMB Director under Ronald Reagan, gets to the heart of what’s really going on:

Putin and Russia have been demonized because the Warfare State desperately needs an “enemy” to justify its $800 billion annual mugging of America’s taxpayers. Yet today’s spontaneous chorus by the two leaders in behalf of détente, dialogue and diplomacy puts the kibosh on that Big Lie more completely than could 100 Ted Talks or a year’s worth of pro-peace op eds in the Washington Post. So Flyover America will have no trouble seeing the good of the Helsinki Summit. Trump and Putin just killed it on every topic where the War Party and its shills in the press wanted to drive a wedge.

That is to say, cooperation on Syria, arms control, terrorism, North Korea, Ukraine; friendly competition on supplying natural gas to Europe; an invitation to Mueller to send his legal sleuths to Russia to participate in the interrogation of the 12 GRU ham sandwiches named in the indictment; and best of all, a reciprocal notion that Russian prosecutors come here to question Deep State operatives about how they helped one of the greatest scoundrels of modern times, Bill Browder, abscond from Russia with almost $1.5 billion skimmed from its people and on which he and his posse paid zero taxes both there and here….

We never thought we’d see the occasion when the Donald was actually lyrical, but he sure was today. Shame on Imperial Washington for its shrill attacks on a President who is actually seeking peace with a rival who has done us no harm.

Former CIA director John Brennan, meanwhile, has been sputtering about treason. This is the same person who voted for Communist Party candidate Gus Hall in 1976, since he thought Jimmy Carter was too belligerent toward Soviet Russia.

That’s the kind of decision that ought to shame you into retiring from public pronouncements forever.”